The 7 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Propaganda Campaigns

Propaganda is what happens when a marketing campaign is run by the most transparently manipulative people in the world, namely politicians. We sort of expect propaganda to be a little stupid to begin with, but there are some examples that go beyond all our expectations and into the land of the hilarious. Like ...

#7. China Pays Army of Internet Article Commenters

In the mid-'00s the government of China faced a great challenge: They knew they couldn't block every single website or censor every single dissenting opinion on the Internet (as much as they'd like to) but they were also not crazy about people having the chance to say things like, "You know what? This whole communism thing kinda blows." Their solution: convince everyone that everything's fine by hiring masses of fake Internet commenters to tell them so.

technet"I'm advancing the party line of a communist nation like it's my birthday."

Sometimes the 50 Centers are given specific missions or targets. For example, when a man in the city of Jiaozuo posted an "unfavorable comment" about the police on a local website, more than 120 fake commenters were sent to contain and change the direction of the debate. And it worked: within 20 minutes, most users were condemning the original poster. That's 20 minutes since the comment was first posted (at which point an alarm probably went off in their headquarters and they went into emergency mode).

Getty"Quick! Something insignificant has happened to a single disgruntled citizen!"

Commenters also trained in classrooms and are given directives on how to deal with current situations. When two high ranking Chinese officials were accused of corruption in 2009, the commenters were instructed to focus on how great the government is at fighting corruption (rather than how corrupt these guys were in the first place).

chinadigitaltimes"If all else fails, bringing up Hitler or 9/11 will almost always derail the conversation."

"If we are democratized, there will be bunch of groups. America would support one, Russia another and Japan another...haha. ... I am satisfied with the way things are. Does America have no dark side? ... Not everyone gets along in America, either: why do you think there's so much crime there?"

This was an official military operation, by the way. It consisted on infiltrating FARC held territories, locating large trees in strategically positioned walking routes and then dressing said trees with Christmas lights. Again: regular, non-electrocuting Christmas lights. The area around the trees (there were 10 in total, all across the country) was rigged with motion sensors that would cause the lights to turn themselves on whenever a FARC rebel wandered by at night, thereby overwhelming them with Christmas cheer (assuming they didn't immediately shoot the trees to shit).

Oh, and just in case the message wasn't clear enough, they also left signs with phrases like "At Christmas everything is possible" and "If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home." Apparently they hoped the FARCs would be so baffled by the fact that someone put a Christmas tree in the middle of the jungle that they would be confused into surrendering, kind of like an anti-terrorist version of the Chewbacca defense.

lowessp3The FARC responded with a statement asking where the fuck were the presents.

What's even more ridiculous is that Operation Christmas took almost 200 Special Forces Operatives, at least two Blackhawk Helicopters, and the motion sensor technology and intelligence work we already mentioned. You couldn't think of a more efficient way to use all those resources against a terrorist group, Colombia? Seriously? They probably realized this the moment after they were done hanging the lights.

Every single step of the plan was carefully planned and executed. The OSS (the CIA's predecessor) produced mail bags and envelopes that looked exactly like proper Nazi-made ones, addressed them properly to real German and Austrian homes, and air-dropped them near mail trains that were bombed specifically for this plan. The idea was that during the clean-up, the German post office workers would mistake the fake mail for real Nazi correspondence and deliver the propaganda.

GettyOr just toss it all in the river.

Also, these weren't just leaflets with the words "HITLER SUCKS" in giant bold letters accompanied by gratuitous drawings of dongs (which is totally what we would have done) -- these were made to look like real German newspapers, complete with sports news, puzzles, columns and such. The jabs at the Nazis were all very sneaky, since the propaganda was meant to demoralize them rather than insult them. This was actually a pretty clever and well thought out plan.

Except for one small detail.

The whole plan hinged on the mail looking authentic, and that's why they also created fake Nazi stamps:

Huh. So let's get this straight: the OSS goes through all the trouble of putting together this whole operation ... only to risk everything by making Hitler look like Skeletor outside the envelopes? If we were Nazi postmen, we'd dump these in the trash. Also, this doesn't even make sense because why would Hitler still have his mustache if his skin is gone? Did he always have another one under there? Nice going, OSS.

#4. China Feels the Need ... the Need For Speed

A big part of propaganda is periodically reminding other countries that you have weapons and know how to use them. It's the only reason we have military parades, air shows and all that crap. Some countries, however, take the ongoing pissing match to bizarre levels, even in this day and age. At this point it should be obvious that we're talking about China again.

Getty"Our main square has way more suppressed history than your main square!"

In January 2011, China's state television (CCTV) revealed footage of the J10 fighter jet, one of the country's most advanced aircrafts in service. The drilling exercise included impressive images of the jet shooting and destroying another aircraft.

Here's the full video. If for some reason those images make you think of cheesy guitar solos and Kenny Loggins, you're not the only one: once the footage was released, it didn't take long for the Internet to realize that parts of it looked strangely familiar ... because they were stolen from Top Gun.

There's a rich irony in China, the largest bastion of communism in the modern world, trying to imitate a movie that's basically one hour and 50 minutes of condensed America. You can practically feel the capitalism oozing out of those pictures. Check it out:

As soon bloggers and YouTube users started pointing out the obvious similarities, CCTV quickly censored the story without explanation. The government made no more references to the supposedly important exercise they were hyping a few days ago, although some of the same pilots were later shown in a strangely homoerotic game of beach volleyball.

Wow, Chinese people sure are looking more white and Tom Cruisey these days.